Tech industry

Tech industry

Tesla released Full Self-Driving v14.2.1.25 on Friday night to Early Access Program (EAP) members. It came as a surprise, as it was paired with the release of the Holiday Update. We were able to go out and test it pretty extensively on Saturday, and the changes Tesla made from the previous version were incredibly impressive, especially considering it seemed to excel where it last came up short.

Naturally, the Chrome team denies that Disco replaces Chrome in any way. And, according to Chrome team leader Parisa Tabriz, Disco isn't a general-purpose browser. It's just an experiment that came out of a company hackathon. However, Google Search Labs is exploring ways to integrate Disco's features - including the tab-opening feature, which it calls GenTabs - into general web browsing. Which could be bad news for those who already have trouble keeping their vast quantity of open tabs in check.

The survey comprised a list of LTE and 5G deployments by operator and region, using deployment data from the industry trade organisation made up of telecommunications service providers and manufacturers, and with subscriber and forecast data provided by analyst Omdia. In all, the analysis found that as of 15 November 2025, there were 379 commercial 5G networks deployed worldwide, including 17 in North America, alongside 707 LTE networks globally. 5G Americas said this infrastructure expansion was key to supporting skyrocketing demand for ultra-reliable, low-latency connectivity.

The team behind Doom: The Dark Ages is the latest to unionize as a wave of labor organizing continues sweeping across Microsoft-owned game studios. They join developers across Blizzard, Bethesda, and other Xbox teams in a move aimed at giving them a seat at the table in how things like layoffs are handled at the tech giant. Roughly 165 workers at id Software announced on Friday that they had unionized with the Communications Workers of America.

I've been watching laptop prices slowly drop throughout 2025, a trend that peaked during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Regardless of the state of the economy, I feel like I can say that laptop prices have never been lower. Some of my favorite laptops have recently offered significant price cuts across Macs, Windows, and Chromebooks. In a time when money is tight for so many of us, that's welcome news.

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), like other tech stocks, traveled through difficult times and better times this year. The stock slipped this spring amid concern about the impact of U.S. import tariffs on corporate earnings. But as President Donald Trump negotiated with other countries, this pressure eased. The company also faced the challenge of an antitrust suit in the U.S., but a ruling in September averted the worst-case scenario --

Besides blocking users from reading its website with an AI chatbot, the magazine anointed the "architects of AI" as its most important visionaries of 2025, eschewing the definition of "person" yet again. The eyeroll-inducing announcement was met with plenty of incredulity, especially considering the astronomical amount of money being spent on building out data centers, their enormous carbon footprint, and a whole litany of other ethical conundrums that the embrace of generative AI has spawned.

Midea's new Miro U looks like someone freeze framed that shot, printed it, and walked it down the hall to the robotics lab with the caption "do this, but for factories." Six coordinated arms, a torso that feels almost cloaked, a wheeled base that spins 360 degrees in place, it reads less like industrial equipment and more like a concept sheet that escaped ArtStation.

The chatbot was drawing from a storm of headlines about Scale AI, which until this summer had been touted as one of the most ascendant startups in tech - the place Big Tech companies vying for AI supremacy went to when they wanted their chatbots stress-tested and perfected. Lately, it's lost some of its gleam, with investors significantly lowering valuations, workers sniping about pay, and rivals coming for its clientele.

Cities worldwide are adopting new technologies to improve quality of life and safety. By integrating data from connected systems, sensors and devices, 'smart cities' better understand how municipal resources are used and where problems arise. An example of this is the changing role of video management systems. Over the years, law enforcement agencies have pushed to install more cameras in high-traffic areas and develop real time crime centers to support more proactive interventions. Now cities are beginning to recognize the value of these cameras and analytics to solve municipal problems as well.

In a video posted to Instagram, EngineAI CEO Zhao Tongyang geared up in leg, stomach, and head pads. Workers taunted him, asking if he was nervous. The company's T800 robot then appeared to kick Tongyang in the stomach, and he can be seen falling to the ground. "Too violent!" Tongyang said in a translation. "Too brutal!" The video featuring its CEO came after EngineAI posted a separate video of its humanoid robot doing kicks and flips.

"Operation Gatekeeper has exposed a sophisticated smuggling network that threatens our Nation's security by funneling cutting-edge AI technology to those who would use it against American interests," said US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei. The investigation had been ongoing since at least last year and centers on the illicit export or attempted export of at least $160 million worth of NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs.

Intel has signed a term sheet to acquire the AI chip startup SambaNova Systems, two sources with direct knowledge of the agreement tell WIRED. The details of the term sheet are unknown. The agreement is non-binding, meaning the deal is not yet finalized and could be dissolved without penalty. It could take weeks or even months before regulatory approval, liability scrutiny, and financial due diligence are complete.

Looking to help modernise and future-proof campus networks across a range of use cases and industries, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) and Nokia have strengthened their strategic partnership to deliver an end-to-end portfolio of network services designed to support the digital transformation of critical industries such as transportation, smart cities, energy and utilities, healthcare, and hospitality. The joint networking services have been deployed by Ikos Resorts in Greece, Pantai Jerudong Hospital in Brunei and Wembley Park in the UK in deployments designed to help establish campus-wide fibre-based LAN networks capable of delivering multi-gigabit data speeds to customers.

Yesterday, the leading Digital Asset Treasury company for Ethereum, Bitmine (NASDAQ: BMNR), posted an update on its holding through December 8th. They possess nearly 4m in ETH, 192 BTC, $1b in cash, and a $36m stake in Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS). Tom Lee has stated the company's goal is to own 5% of the ETH supply, and they continue to purchase Ethereum on a weekly basis. As of yesterday, Bitmine had purchased 138,452 ETH over the prior week, the largest purchase week for Bitmine.

Slack CEO Denise Dresser is leaving the company and joining OpenAI as the company's chief revenue officer, multiple sources tell WIRED. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, which owns Slack, shared news of Dresser's departure in a message to staff on Monday evening. At OpenAI, Dresser will manage the company's enterprise unit, which has been growing rapidly this year. She will report to chief operating officer Brad Lightcap. She starts next week.

"Last week, VSCO said goodbye to 24 employees as a result of a company restructure [sic],"

New Relic today announced the general availability of a new platform capability that allows users to directly query entity and relationship data within New Relic Database (NRDB) using the familiar New Relic Query Language (NRQL). This powerful capability allows users to seamlessly join this vital information with their telemetry data, all in one place.

Stanley Druckenmiller of Duquesne Family Office bought 76,100 shares of Meta Platforms and 102,200 shares of Alphabet. They collectively account for 2% of his portfolio. Israel Englander of Millennium Management purchased 793,500 shares of Meta Platforms and 2.2 million shares of Alphabet. They are now his eighth- and fifth-largest holdings, respectively, excluding options.

The Indian government has officially rescinded a controversial mandate that would have forced smartphone manufacturers to ship new devices with a state-run cybersafety tool preloaded. The decision, confirmed by India's telecoms ministry on Wednesday, marks a swift policy reversal following significant resistance from global tech giants and privacy advocates. The initial directive, issued confidentially on Nov. 28, set a 90-day deadline for vendors to integrate the Sanchar Saathi app into their firmware, with the stipulation that users must not be allowed to delete it.

And while robotaxi rival Waymo recently partnered with DoorDash to test food deliveries with driverless cars, Levinson said that Zoox is "laser focused" on moving people around cities, an addressable market he sees as being "just profoundly huge." That directive has come "all the way from the very top" at Amazon, he added, despite the retailer's significant interest in driverless package delivery.

AWS CEO Matt Garman's annual re:Invent keynote was the best kind of keynote, in that you could have slept in for nearly all of it and still been thrilled to pieces, provided you caught the last ten minutes. He concluded what was otherwise an AI-palooza chock full of boring guest speakers with an Andy Jassy style "twenty-five releases in ten minutes," complete with a basketball-style ten-minute shot clock counting down the time.

Dr. Yang Zuoxing, Founder and CEO of MicroBT, opened the event with a keynote that highlighted the connection between technological leadership and long-term industry growth. He framed the conversation around energy innovation, presenting strategies that aim to integrate renewable sources into mining operations. Central to his remarks was an off-grid solar solution capable of 200kW output. This system, using an 800V DC supply and a "load-following-source" design, improves efficiency compared to traditional AC setups and enables uninterrupted operation.

"Whether you're pinpointing best practices from a recently completed campaign, surfacing trends in recent P1 incidents, or identifying which upcoming initiatives have the greatest potential for success, the Atlassian Rovo MCP Server and ChatGPT make it easy to connect the dots across your organization's knowledge," the firm in a blog post. Users can now summarize Jira work items or Confluence pages instantly within ChatGPT and go beyond a basic summary to make use of the AI tool's reasoning and research capabilities.

Finally, they've revealed the Mobile Eccentric Droid, a.k.a. MobED, a mobility robot platform tailored for a diverse range of industrial and everyday-use applications. The bot was shown off at the International Robot Exhibition 2025 (iREX 2025) in Tokyo. According to Dong Jin Hyun, Vice President and Head of Hyundai Motor Group Robotics LAB, the new robot will help "accelerate a future where humans and robots coexist." The most exciting bit, it'll be up for sale in the first half of 2026.